Basic payouts to grieving families of people killed in the London bombings which are likely to total just £11,000 are being condemned by lawyers, victims and their support groups as too little too late.

Experts believe it will be between 12 and 18 months before the payouts are made by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority and years before the relatives receive final compensation.

Gary Reid is still waiting for his full cheque more than six years after losing his left leg and a finger and suffering a catalogue of other injuries in the nail bomb attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in London's Soho.

Reid, 49, spent almost a year in St Thomas's Hospital in the capital following the attack which left three people dead and 70 injured.

The former psychiatric nurse had to rely on the hospital relief fund for £10 or £20 handouts to buy weekly essentials before he heard about the scheme.

Recovery from such a trauma takes a long time and last week Reid received a date for major surgery which involves grafting a false limb to replace his left leg.

But he could be walking before he receives a final payment from the authority, which is accused by its critics of being over-bureaucratic and penny-pinching.

So far Reid, who is appealing against his initial award, has spent £14,000 on lawyers' fees over the last six years in pursuing his claim. He points out that this sum plus legal expenses - which, in his case, include the cost of medical reports about his injuries - will be deducted from any final payment. 'For me it was a joy to hear that such a thing as the criminal injuries scheme existed,' recalls Reid, who grew up in New Zealand.

'It's such a small part of a person's rehabilitation but knowing it was there helped me realise the whole world wasn't against me and that people did have some sort of understanding of what we were going through.'

However, when he found that those who lost partners in the blast would receive only the basic payment - then £10,000 - 'different feelings began to creep in'.

'After all, that is a human life we're talking about,' he says. 'Then when you read of secretaries, for example, receiving huge payouts for suffering repetitive strain injury for typing too much that really makes you wonder about the way in which society values loss.'

Families who lost loved ones in last month's attacks are likely to receive the 'basic payments' under the scheme, which started in 1964 to 'provide compensation to the victims of violent crime on behalf of the government'. Its strict tariff which pays from £1,000 up to an overall maximum of £500,000, is applied rigidly.

The government insists the scheme is one of the most generous in the world and pays out more than £200 million a year to thousands of crime victims.

But it acknowledges that this is not 'compensation' in any legal sense. The £11,000 basic payment for the bereaved 'is, and can be no more than, a mark of public sympathy, recognising your grief if you lost a loved one in the bombings', says an authority official.

Even so, the scheme is nowhere near as generous as it was before a radical overhaul under the Tory government in 1996. Before that compensation was roughly similar to that paid by courts, and there was no upper limit.

'The scheme doesn't enjoy a great reputation,' says Colin Ettinger, a former president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and a partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell.

'It's slow, probably understaffed and the impression you get is that they are defenders of the public purse rather than there to ensure that people are properly compensated.'

The scheme is heavily circumscribed and, for example, insurance payouts and welfare benefits are deducted from final pay-outs. A person's previous criminal record is taken into account: the scheme is only for 'blameless' victims of crime.

'While the tariff is tight enough, there is also an overriding impression that the people who run the scheme regard the money as their own and hate giving it away,' says one barrister.

Clive Elliott, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, says: 'Murder destroys more than the victim's life. It destroys marriages, families, neighbourhoods and communities and adversely affects the whole mood of the country.

'If you were to lose two arms under the scheme you might get £220,000 but if you lose a loved one you get £11,000. The tariff beggars belief: it's totally clinical.'

Victims' payouts

Awards are made by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority according to a scale set in 2001. There are 25 levels of compensation for injuries, ranging from £1,000 to £250,000.

If a victim also qualifies for lost earnings and/or special expenses, there can be extra compensation up to £250,000. The maximum combined amount payable under the scheme is £500,000.

Victims suffering multiple injuries are compensated for three of them at most. The tariff is long and specific. This list is a small excerpt:

Bereavement: £11,000, or £5,500 each if there is more than one claimant.

Pain and suffering for injury 'more serious than cuts and bruises': £1,000-£250,000.

Trauma 'directly due to fear of immediate physical injury or death': Shock £1,000